Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday May 14, 2011 @01:44PM
from the good-luck-with-that dept.

the simurgh writes with this excerpt from Reuters: "A British judge has banned Twitter users from identifying a brain-damaged woman in one of the first attempts to prevent the messaging website from revealing sensitive information. The ruling follows the publication on Twitter on Sunday of a list of celebrities alleged to have tried to cover up sexual indiscretions by obtaining court gag orders. The injunction, dated May 12 and seen by Reuters on Friday, includes Twitter and Facebook in the list of media prohibited from disclosing the information. It was issued in the Court of Protection in the case of a mother who wants to withdraw life support from her brain-damaged daughter. It prevents the identification of the woman and those caring for her."

The whole idea is really sad. The judge's order is basically "don't be a dick about this, we are trying to spare a family the additional pain of dealing with a bunch of idiots making death threats while they're already having a hard time dealing with the issue at hand."

If they were celebretards, I wouldn't care as much, because they have practice in dealing with the media and idiots. But these are just ordinary people who are already having a hell of a bad time.

The British Judges issuing these "super-injuctions" have been out of control for some time.

Recently, they've begun issuing so called "hyper-injunctions [telegraph.co.uk], where not only are you not allowed to reveal details of the matter, and not only are you forbidden from revealing that you are forbidden from reveal details of a matter, you are further forbidden from talking to any journalist or even your own MP about the matter or the fact that you are unable to reveal details of a matter.

When one of these injunctions was revealed by an MP speaking in parliament, the judges attempted to prevent newspapers from publishing the proceeding of parliament. (Like the spineless curs they are, the British press immediately capitulated). The matter caused quite a todo, but instead of reforming the system, the judges invented hyper-injunctions instead.

Basically, the British judges are out of control. And the judges are the problem here. No sensible judge concerned with the dignity of his office would issue such a ridiculous gag order for twitter users. It's barely one step above ordering people to stop gossiping in pubs. Ordering around citizens from other countries is hardly a major move by comparision.

It would be interesting to figure out why the judges are behaving like this, particularly in England, where judges are renowned for issuing decisive judgements and setting common law precedent. While I know little about it, I'm going to pre-emptively blame whatever pro-business, anti-justice legal philosophy that has been promoted over the last 30 years in law schools, until I see evidence to the contrary.

He wouldn't have to prohibit the publishing of the name. He could use social pressure instead.

"The court orders that if the name of the woman is published, that the person who reveals the name will also be published, and they should be reviled by all civilized people."

Imagine what would happen to the guy if he was outed to a group like/b/, and they decided he was scum. We've seen what happened to the woman who threw the cat in the garbage can. That public spanking didn't stop at national boundaries.

Of course, John Smith might be a member of/b/, and might be revealing the name just for teh lulz. He might get spanked, he might not. But it's an approach we could consider.